Kumagawa: Waters That Remember
2025
Yatake mountain area of Hitoyoshi, Japan
On the fifth anniversary of the 2020 flood disaster in Kumamoto, I spent nearly two months in residence in the Yatake mountain area of Hitoyoshi. During this time, I collaborated with local residents on a community art project that combined oral history with visual collage. In the workshops, participants shared personal observations of the Kumagawa landscape through photographs, drawings, and stories. Using the cyanotype process, I developed these precious images onto delicate silk fabric pieces, then sewed them together with the pattern arrangement inspired from Tatami in the residence.
Thanks to LOCAL TO LOCAL for the invitation and support. Through this exchange and artistic collaboration five years later, we hope to collectively imagine new, myth-like impressions for this land—stitching them together into a vast flag, allowing memories once washed away by time to be seen and preserved.
